3D Graphics Rendering and Terrain Modeling

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3D Graphics Rendering and Terrain Modeling

• Technology and Historical Overview

By Ricardo Veguilla
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Overview

• Introduction to 3D Computer Graphics
• OpenGL
• SGI vs Linux
• 3D Animation
• Terrain Modeler Project Status

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Introduction to 3d Computer Graphics

• 3D computer graphics is the science, study, and
  method of projecting a mathematical
  representation of 3D objects onto a 2D image
  using visual tricks such as perspective and
  shading to simulate the eye's perception of those
  objects.

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3D Graphics and Physics

• 3D graphic software is largely based on
  simulating physical interactions.
• Generally
• Space relations.
• Light interactions.
• In particular cases
• Material properties.
• Object Movement.

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Goals of 3D computers graphics

• Practical goal Visualization - to generate
  images (usually of recognizable subjects) that
  are useful in some way.
• Ideal goal Photorealism - to produce images
  indistinguishable from photographs.

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Components of a 3D Graphic System

• 3D Modeling
• A way to describe the 3D world or scene, which is
  composed of mathematical representations of 3D
  objects called models.
• 3D Rendering
• A mechanism responsible for producing a 2D image
  from 3D models.

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3D Modeling

• Simple 3D objects can be modeled using
  mathematical equations operating in the
  3-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system.
• Example

the equation x2 y2 z2 r2 is a model of a
perfect sphere with radius r.
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Modeling considerations

• Pure mathematical equations to represent 3D
  objects requires a great deal of computing power
• Impractical for real-time applications such as
  games or interactive simulations.

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Alternatives Polygon Models

• Modeling objects by sampling only certain points
  on the object, retaining no data about the
  curvature in between
• More efficient, but less detailed.

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Alternatives Texture Mapping

• Technique used to add surface color detail
  without increasing the complexity of a model.
• An image is mapped to the surface of a model.

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From 3D models to 2D images

• A 3D world or scene is composed of collection of
  3d models
• Three different coordinates systems (or spaces)
  are defined for different model related
  operations
• Object Space
• World Space
• Screen Space

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Object Space

• The coordinate system in which a specific 3D
  object is defined.
• Each object usually have its own object space
  with the origin at the object's center
• The object center is the point about which the
  object is moved and rotated.

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World Space

• World space is the coordinate system of the 3D
  world to be rendered.
• The position and orientation of all the models
  are defined relative to the center of the world
  space.
• The position and orientation of the virtual
  camera is also defined relative to the world
  space.

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Screen Space

• 2D space that represents the boundaries of the
  image to be produced.
• Many optimization techniques are performed on
  screen space.

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Mathematics of 3D graphics

• 3D operations like translation, rotation and
  scaling are performed using matrices and lineal
  algebra.
• Each operation is performed by multiplying the
  3D vertices by a specific transformation matrix.

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3D Rendering

• The process of taking the mathematical model of
  the world and producing the output image.
• The core of the rendering process involves
  projecting the 3D models onto a 2D image plane.

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Types of Rendering Algorithms

• Two general approaches
• Pixel-oriented rendering
• Ray tracers
• Polygon-oriented rendering
• Scan-line renderers

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Ray tracers

• Operates by tracing theoretical light rays as
  they intersect objects in the scene and the
  projection plane.

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Ray tracer limitations

• Processor intensive. A full ray tracer is
  impractical for real-time applications.
• Does not take into account inter-reflections of
  diffuse light, resulting in hard shadows.

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Radiosity

• Technique that models the inter-reflections of
  diffuse light between surfaces of the world or
  environment.
• Produces more photorealistic illumination and
  shadows.

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Scan-line renderers

• Operate on an object-by-object basis, directly
  drawing each polygon to the screen.
• Requires all objects including those modeled
  with continuous curvature to be tessellated
  into polygons.
• Polygons are eventually tessellated into pixels.

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Illumination for scan-line renderers

• Lighting and shading is calculated using the
  normal vector.
• The color is linearly interpolated across the
  polygon surface.

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Common shading techniques scan-line renderer

• Flat shading
• Gouraud Shading
• Phong Shading

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Flat Shading

• The color of the polygon is calculated at the
  center of the polygon by using the normal vector.
  
• The complete polygon surface is uniformly
  lighted.

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Gouraud Shading

• A normal vector is calculated at each vertex.
• Color is calculated for each vertex and
  interpolated across the polygon

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Phong Shading

• The normal vectors are interpolated across the
  surface of the polygon
• The color of each point within the polygon is
  calculated from its corresponding normal vector

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Polygon shading techniques compared
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Viewing frustum

• Segment of the 3D world to be rendered
• Objects outside the viewing volume are ignored.

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Hidden surface determination

• Not all objects inside the viewing frustum are
  always visible from the point of view of the
  camera.
• Not all polygons of a particular object are
  visible from the point of view of the camera.
• Common Techniques
• Painters Algorithm
• Z-Buffering

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Painters Algorithm

• Polygon-oriented.
• All the polygons are sorted by their depth and
  then displayed in this order.

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Z-Buffering

• Pixel-oriented.
• When multiple objects overlap (from the point of
  view of the camera) on a particular pixel, only
  the value of the pixel closest to the camera is
  used.
• Implemented by saving the depth value of each
  displayed pixel in a buffer, and comparing the
  depth of each new overlapping pixel against the
  value in the buffer.

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Perspective Projection

• Projects the 3D world to a 2D image

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• The Open Graphics Language

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OpenGL The Open Graphics Language

• De facto Application Programming Interface (API)
  for cross-platform development of 3D graphics
  applications.
• Implementations available for all major Operating
  Systems and hardware platforms.
• Support for hardware accelerated 3D rendering.
• Scalable, high-level, easy to use, well
  documented.

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History of OpenGL

• Originally released by SGI in the early 90s.
• Descendant of IRIX GL.
• Previous 3D graphics APIs were generally platform
  dependant.
• Born out of market pressure for a cross-platform
  3D API during the late 80s.

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OpenGL - Code Example

• How to define a triangle
• glBegin (GL_TRIANGLES)
• glVertex (0,0,0)
• glVertex (1,1,0)
• glVertex (2,0,0)
• glEnd ()

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Development with OpenGL

• OpenGL API designed only for drawing images.
• Auxiliary visual toolkits are required for
  developing OpenGL applications for modern
  windowed desktop environments.
• Potential options
• GLUT, SDL, GTK

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Potential Auxiliary Toolkits

• GLUT Specifically designed for developing OpenGL
  demo applications.
• SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) Library for
  multimedia and game development.
• GTK General purpose toolkit for creating
  graphical user interfaces with OpenGL extensions
  available.

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SGI vs Linux

• VS

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SGI vs Linux

• Linux is quickly becoming the preferred OS for
  OpenGL and 3D computer graphics development.
• Today Linux dominates one of SGIs most
  controlled market Movie Special Effects.
• Why?

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SGI and Hollywood

• Special effects production pipeline involves
• The graphic workstation Used by the artists to
  create the models and textures used in the visual
  effects sequence.
• The render-farm A computer cluster dedicated
  for rendering the images or animations that form
  the visual effect sequence.

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SGIs Market dominance

• SGI dominated the market of 3D graphics solutions
  during the 80s and 90s.
• SGI hardware provided excellent performance for
  rendering calculations combined with a fast video
  subsystem.
• The computer special effects market was locked-in
  to SGIs hardware.
• Most of the 3D rendering software was developed
  for IRIX (SGIs UNIX OS).

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SGI economics disadvantages

• SGIs workstations are expensive.
• Historically FX houses purchased large amount of
  SGIs, which were amortized over several movies
  (usually 5 years).

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The rise of Lintel (LinuxIntel)

• Causes
• The development of Linux (an open source UNIX
  clone for the PC) during the 90s.
• The continuous performance increase of the Intel
  CPUs.
• The development of consumer-level 3D acceleration
  hardware for the PC driven by the growing video
  game market.

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Why the switch to Lintel?

• Lintel platform provides a higher
  cost/performance ratio.
• Linux is a POSIX complaint UNIX clone, porting
  the software from IRIX is trivial.
• Linux is open-source and runs in
  multiple-architectures which greatly limits the
  possibility of vendor lock-in.

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Lintel economic benefits

• Using Lintel, a large portion of the hardware
  costs can be recouped with every movie.
• Buying a new render-farm for each new movie is
  economically viable.

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Not just for the render-farm

• Initially Linux was used for render-farm.
• Now it is used for the graphic workstation as
  well.
• It is even displacing Apple computers as the
  standard platform for video/film editing and
  compositing.

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Results?

• Movies created using Lintel
• Titanic
• Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
• The Harry Potter Movies
• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
• Shrek and Shrek 2
• Practically every movie involving special-effects
  made after the year 2000

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Lintel on other 3D graphics areas.

• The Lintel cost/performance also benefits the
  academic/scientific applications of 3D computer
  graphics.
• Heavily used in automotive and aeronautics
  industries for solid modeling and simulations.

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3D Animation
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Luxo Jr.

• The first film produced by Pixar in 1986.
• It demonstrates the use of ray tracing to
  simulate the shifting light and shadow given by
  the animated lamps as well as simple surface
  textures.
• It was the first CGI film to be nominated for an
  Academy Award.

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Luxo Jr. Returns

• 16 years after the debut of Luxo Jr., Steve Jobs
  demonstrated the same animation running in
  real-time on a Apple G5 computer with an Nvidia
  Geforce 3 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit).
• On 1985 - Rendering each frame of the original
  animation took 55 hours of processing on a Cray
  Supercomputer
• On 2001 Rendering each frame took 1/30 of a
  second on a personal computer

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• Terrain Modeler
• Project Status

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Previously implemented features

• Application developed in C and tested exclusively
  on SGI.
• Terrain image loading tested with a 201x201
  Matlab generated input file.
• Terrain Modeling with OpenGL using points or
  unshaded polygons.
• Fixed camera.
• Terrain rotation and scaling.
• Limited option for Level-of-detail (LOD)
  rendering.

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Newly Implemented Features

• Support for Autotools for cross-platform
  development (currently tested on SGI and Linux).
• Code modularization and refactoring.
• Full virtual camera.
• Memory Manager subsystem for monitoring memory
  utilization.
• Preliminary Lighting support.
• Preliminary support for rendering multiple
  terrains.

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Future Improvements

• Full windowed application.
• Support for screen captures.
• Support for Land-marking (3D bookmarks)
• Support for animation scripting and recording.
• Support for simultaneous rendering of multiple
  terrains.

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Future Improvements (Cont.)

• Restructure code to accommodate three module
  abstraction layers
• IO Layer Modules for reading and writing
  terrain files of different formats.
• Sampling Layer Modules implementing different
  LOD algorithms with user-selected sampling value.
  
• Rendering Layer Modules for rendering the
  terrain using different OpenGL primitives,
  rendering attributes and vendor-optimized code
  paths.

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Long-term

• Porting the project to Jogl Java OpenGL
• http//java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/jcan
  yon/

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References

• Wikipidia The Free Encyclopedia
• http//www.wikipedia.org/
• OpenGL - The Industry Standard for High
  Performance Graphics
• http//www.opengl.org/
• Google Image Search
• http//images.google.com
• Overview of 3D Interactive Graphics
• http//www.siggraph.org/project-grants/com97/com97
  -tut.html
• Linux Journal - Industry of Change Linux Storms
  Hollywood
• http//www.linuxjournal.com/article/5472
• JCanyon - Grand Canyon Demo
• http//java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/jcan
  yon/